The Kim’s are pretty horrendous types, but it’s also a fairly bad idea to see a chinese intervention
into the korean peninsula.
The Qing dynasty invaded Korea and kept it as a tribute vassal for 250 years.
If the Chinese PLA decides to cross the Yalu river they could easily find themselves dealing with the
collapsing north korean state and power vacuum. That means either the South Korean’s move north
and deal with a famished, starving, impoverished region, or the chinese move south, dealing with a famished, starving impoverished region.
The ROK lined up at some border with the PLA could be very unstable, and, the Chinese could easily spark some incident to test their military and occupy south korea.
The Kim GOvernment is a mess, but fixing the situation is not easily done by outsiders, and the two closest neighbors will not be well suited to a peaceful transition.
I’m quite sure the Chinese have thought of that.
I think the Chinese are being infected with capitalist greed and are choosing to ignore the fact that North Korea is the left-wing progressive paradise, beloved by Ed Asner and countless others. Rock stars wish they could be Kim Jong-Un and would kill to have his beautiful hair.
I don’t know where you get this idea that North Korea is a progressive paradise.
Canada, denmark or norway are much better examples of progressive social dem countries.
technically everyone in Norway and Denmark are all millionaires.
it must really cause some howling from the quasi-conservatives.
The Revolutionary Communist Party says North Korea is a worker’s paradise. If you can’t trust a commie, who can you trust?
Are you afraid of conservatives because you live in DC? I don’t know what your job is, but I imagine it has something to do with mooching off the rest of us in this country. Is your strange theory of how the world works tainted by an economic need for taxpayer money?
One million NOK is roughly 169,000.00 USD at the current rate; a fair chunk of change, but hardly worth crowing about, especially given that Norway is a very expensive place to live. Denmark’s not much better.
No howling at all. The Norwegians are rich off oil money, selling it at an extreme profit to the less fortunate state of Europe. They’re pretty much the prototype of Sarah Palin’s Alaska.
What’s interesting is that Norway almost tanked when the oil money came in because they stupidly thought that they should just spread it around to all the Norwegians, which caused their currency to plummet. That’s why the Norwegians are millionaires on paper, but not by bank balance. They quickly realized that economics is real but socialism is a bizarre fantasy, and in some major ways abandoned it. Since then they’ve promoted diversification, job creation, and are way to the right of the US on many economic issues, having stared into the abyss. Now their banks warn that the oil boom will collapse and that they’ll have to make major cuts in welfare and other programs, and will face a situation similar to Finland’s after the collapse of Nokia’s near-monopoly on cell phones. The Nokia collapse followed moderately successful attempts by the usual suspects to unionize Nokia’s workforce, which resulted in shutdowns, missed shipments, cash flow problems, severe blows to investor confidence, subsequent cutbacks, and getting eaten alive by Apple, followed by an ultra-cheap buyout by Microsoft.
The progressive socialist future is to be bought out by Bill Gates, and then get downsized. 🙂
Temporary problems only. The permanent problem is extinction. At current reproduction rates – or, more correctly, lack of reproduction rates – there will be no Scandinavians or Finns at all in a century or so. Nokia getting bought by Microsoft is going to look like the Good Old Days in a few decades.
The remarkable thing about this leaked Chinese contingency plan is that it does NOT contemplate sending Chinese troops into North Korea at all.
Dig around a bit for details (sadly lacking in most reports) and you’ll see that the contingency planned for is a collapse of North Korea initiated by an attack by unnamed outsiders. The Chinese plan is to then stay on their side of the border, controlling and containing NK refugees, separating out any NK leadership that comes along and isolating them so they cannot organize resistance against the unnamed outsiders from within China.
It’s almost as if China is saying to the unnamed outsiders “Take North Korea – please!”
Seriously. Up till now there’s been a strong presumption that China would move in and carve out a buffer zone (if not take over the whole place) if the NK regime fell. The leaking of this particular plan looks like a signal of a major policy change: China seems to be saying that they’d be OK with a unified Korea under the South after all.
Not that the South (or the US) are likely to be eager to grasp this “opportunity” and gin up an invasion. Talk about your thankless (and dangerous, and massively expensive) tasks.
But when (not if) the current NK regime does collapse, this looks very much like China saying to South Korea “we don’t want it – you take it.”
My first assumption would be that this leak is a warning message from China to NK, not a real plan they expect to execute; i.e., “Don’t expect us to bail you out if you start a war with South Korea/Japan/USA”.
Well, yes, given that the unnamed outsiders would really rather not deal with the whole mess and are vanishingly unlikely to unilaterally invade, yes, the NK regime is a major audience for this leak. “Don’t expect us to bail you out if you start a war with South Korea/Japan/USA” indeed.
At the same time, if this is supposed to now be Chinese policy in the event the NK’s provoke a Western invasion by aggression, might it not also be Chinese policy if the NK’s provoke a Western occupation/reconstruction by collapse? “No, we won’t let you continue as a government-in-exile fighting a guerrilla war from Chinese territory.”
Unless, it occurs to me, the new regime in Korea should annoy China too much. At that point they could use the NK leadership they have in custody to cause all sorts of trouble. IE, additional ongoing leverage.
Given China’s recent crude attempts at throwing its weight around in the South China and East China Seas, South Korea may be on better terms with the 800-pound gorilla than any of its other neighbors. China has territorial beefs with just about everyone else: Vietnam, Philippines, Japan, Indonesia. I’ve not heard of any comparable problems with South Korea. Plus, the SK’s are an increasingly important trading partner for China. Could be they are actually sincere about the “quarantine and stand aside” policy when NorKor goes pear-shaped.
The Kim’s are pretty horrendous types, but it’s also a fairly bad idea to see a chinese intervention
into the korean peninsula.
The Qing dynasty invaded Korea and kept it as a tribute vassal for 250 years.
If the Chinese PLA decides to cross the Yalu river they could easily find themselves dealing with the
collapsing north korean state and power vacuum. That means either the South Korean’s move north
and deal with a famished, starving, impoverished region, or the chinese move south, dealing with a famished, starving impoverished region.
The ROK lined up at some border with the PLA could be very unstable, and, the Chinese could easily spark some incident to test their military and occupy south korea.
The Kim GOvernment is a mess, but fixing the situation is not easily done by outsiders, and the two closest neighbors will not be well suited to a peaceful transition.
I’m quite sure the Chinese have thought of that.
I think the Chinese are being infected with capitalist greed and are choosing to ignore the fact that North Korea is the left-wing progressive paradise, beloved by Ed Asner and countless others. Rock stars wish they could be Kim Jong-Un and would kill to have his beautiful hair.
I don’t know where you get this idea that North Korea is a progressive paradise.
Canada, denmark or norway are much better examples of progressive social dem countries.
technically everyone in Norway and Denmark are all millionaires.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/08/us-norway-millionaires-idUSBREA0710U20140108
it must really cause some howling from the quasi-conservatives.
The Revolutionary Communist Party says North Korea is a worker’s paradise. If you can’t trust a commie, who can you trust?
Are you afraid of conservatives because you live in DC? I don’t know what your job is, but I imagine it has something to do with mooching off the rest of us in this country. Is your strange theory of how the world works tainted by an economic need for taxpayer money?
One million NOK is roughly 169,000.00 USD at the current rate; a fair chunk of change, but hardly worth crowing about, especially given that Norway is a very expensive place to live. Denmark’s not much better.
No howling at all. The Norwegians are rich off oil money, selling it at an extreme profit to the less fortunate state of Europe. They’re pretty much the prototype of Sarah Palin’s Alaska.
What’s interesting is that Norway almost tanked when the oil money came in because they stupidly thought that they should just spread it around to all the Norwegians, which caused their currency to plummet. That’s why the Norwegians are millionaires on paper, but not by bank balance. They quickly realized that economics is real but socialism is a bizarre fantasy, and in some major ways abandoned it. Since then they’ve promoted diversification, job creation, and are way to the right of the US on many economic issues, having stared into the abyss. Now their banks warn that the oil boom will collapse and that they’ll have to make major cuts in welfare and other programs, and will face a situation similar to Finland’s after the collapse of Nokia’s near-monopoly on cell phones. The Nokia collapse followed moderately successful attempts by the usual suspects to unionize Nokia’s workforce, which resulted in shutdowns, missed shipments, cash flow problems, severe blows to investor confidence, subsequent cutbacks, and getting eaten alive by Apple, followed by an ultra-cheap buyout by Microsoft.
The progressive socialist future is to be bought out by Bill Gates, and then get downsized. 🙂
Temporary problems only. The permanent problem is extinction. At current reproduction rates – or, more correctly, lack of reproduction rates – there will be no Scandinavians or Finns at all in a century or so. Nokia getting bought by Microsoft is going to look like the Good Old Days in a few decades.
The remarkable thing about this leaked Chinese contingency plan is that it does NOT contemplate sending Chinese troops into North Korea at all.
Dig around a bit for details (sadly lacking in most reports) and you’ll see that the contingency planned for is a collapse of North Korea initiated by an attack by unnamed outsiders. The Chinese plan is to then stay on their side of the border, controlling and containing NK refugees, separating out any NK leadership that comes along and isolating them so they cannot organize resistance against the unnamed outsiders from within China.
It’s almost as if China is saying to the unnamed outsiders “Take North Korea – please!”
Seriously. Up till now there’s been a strong presumption that China would move in and carve out a buffer zone (if not take over the whole place) if the NK regime fell. The leaking of this particular plan looks like a signal of a major policy change: China seems to be saying that they’d be OK with a unified Korea under the South after all.
Not that the South (or the US) are likely to be eager to grasp this “opportunity” and gin up an invasion. Talk about your thankless (and dangerous, and massively expensive) tasks.
But when (not if) the current NK regime does collapse, this looks very much like China saying to South Korea “we don’t want it – you take it.”
My first assumption would be that this leak is a warning message from China to NK, not a real plan they expect to execute; i.e., “Don’t expect us to bail you out if you start a war with South Korea/Japan/USA”.
Well, yes, given that the unnamed outsiders would really rather not deal with the whole mess and are vanishingly unlikely to unilaterally invade, yes, the NK regime is a major audience for this leak. “Don’t expect us to bail you out if you start a war with South Korea/Japan/USA” indeed.
At the same time, if this is supposed to now be Chinese policy in the event the NK’s provoke a Western invasion by aggression, might it not also be Chinese policy if the NK’s provoke a Western occupation/reconstruction by collapse? “No, we won’t let you continue as a government-in-exile fighting a guerrilla war from Chinese territory.”
Unless, it occurs to me, the new regime in Korea should annoy China too much. At that point they could use the NK leadership they have in custody to cause all sorts of trouble. IE, additional ongoing leverage.
Given China’s recent crude attempts at throwing its weight around in the South China and East China Seas, South Korea may be on better terms with the 800-pound gorilla than any of its other neighbors. China has territorial beefs with just about everyone else: Vietnam, Philippines, Japan, Indonesia. I’ve not heard of any comparable problems with South Korea. Plus, the SK’s are an increasingly important trading partner for China. Could be they are actually sincere about the “quarantine and stand aside” policy when NorKor goes pear-shaped.